While many devices for manipulating threaded connectors and driving sockets have been heretofore known and/or utilized, a problem persists in their application and use when the connector to be manipulated is located in a cramped, distant, obstructed or awkward to reach space. This has been particularly true where the threaded connector being manipulated is a line fitting (various types of which are utilized to join the ends of conduits, cables, and the like to each other or to another component in a mechanical and/or electrical system). Application and use of such heretofore known devices frequently has involved at least partial disassembly of associated structure or components to gain access to the connector, risked damage to the connector, and/or required awkward manipulation of the socket and/or driver to position the device over the line and/or to engage and manipulate the connector.
Perhaps the most common of such heretofore known devices are simple box wrenches or fitting wrenches. However, use of such standard wrenches, involving movement of the handle of the wrench through a significant arc, is not well suited to applications in cramped locations, or where a plurality of line fittings are closely positioned relative to one another (at least where one does not wish to remove all fittings in a series, or row, of fittings leading to the targeted fitting). Additionally, use of these well known types of wrenches necessarily involves a "hands-on" operation.
Various tools have been suggested to reach fasteners located in cramped areas and/or for application with a power driver (see, for example, U.S. Pat. Nos. 3,477,318, 3,620,105, 2,578,686, 4,374,479, 4,928,559, 5,050,463 and 2,630,731), with such devices, however, likewise not providing for minimization of awkward manipulations of the tool and/or the socket during operation, and/or not optimizing ease of utility, mechanical durability and thus reliability, and compactness of structure. Moreover, these devices have not addressed the need to access obstructed locations (i.e., the ability to work around obstructions or to access fittings from difficult angles). Further improvements in such tools could thus still be utilized.